Fragrance retailer The Perfume Shop posted a 2.5% jump in like-for-like sales across its Christmas trading period. Managing director Jo Walker talks about its plans for the year ahead.

Retail Week: How do you think 2013 will pan out?

Jo Walker: It will be another hard year, there is no doubt about that but we will stick to the plan and adjust it if we need to. It has been tougher in 2012 than in previous years but we’re pleased with our growth within that.

We did okay over Christmas. But we might have expected to do a bit more.

You opened pop-up shops for the Christmas period, how did they perform?

The trial was very successful. It was a good opportunity.

We needed to think about the shopfit and ensure it was to standard, but it looked fantastic. We would only open them at Christmas though.

The determining factor as to where we operated was about whether we had a strong team in a store close-by. It was a good stepping stone for staff from a development perspective.

Mobile sales were particularly good for The Perfume Shop over Christmas, do you have plans to develop your m-commerce capabilities?

Mobile has had really good initial results. We are continuing to work on an app which should be ready to launch in the first half of this year.

What is driving growth at the moment?

We are doing very well with attracting the younger customers. They come in after school and they enjoy the banter because we’re engaging with them. They are our customers of the future. Their brand awareness is huge and we’re finding that the celebrity fragrances are very popular.

We are giving the customer what they want, which is convenience. It’s our 21st birthday this year and we will be celebrating with promotions, with products for £21 or 21% off.

Will you be opening new stores?

We have 258 stores now. We are opening a store in Leeds Trinity in March and we are in talks on a number of stores this year. We have looked at one or two stores left by the administration of Jessops. To be honest it seems it was paying too much rent which is one of the problems.

We get offered ten shops a day. We’re a strong business but some of these sites are not right and we don’t want to be a business with tertiary location.

Would you think of opening stores overseas?

We are focusing on the UK business and don’t want to be distracted from the core business, as even opening in Ireland was a big move.

But we’re not a super-planned business. We’re still reactive but on big projects we’re very mindful of the core business.

From a cost investment perspective we need to think are we investing in key strategic areas such as CRM, digital, people and the shop fit. We have a serious refit capital programme for our estate.

We are selling a luxury product and at the end of the day we want the shops to be the top end of the market.

How is the tie up with sister retailer Superdrug going?

We now have 46 shop-in-shops and that’s it for the moment and we are pleased with their performance. We will be continuously reviewing the locations.

Superdrug improved their fragrance offer in the back end of 2012 and we supported that. If we can help them and work closely with them then we can work with suppliers and therefore secure product for Superdrug and The Perfume Shop.

You launched own label fragrances last year, how have they traded?

Own label is about offering customers more entry price products. The fragrances did well and we will review these and look more closely at the timing of when it is best for them to launch.